The present invention relates to a method for generating a font-based sparkine.
In order to display a large amount of information in a compact and intelligible form it is known from the prior art to use so-called sparklines which are word-sized, minimized diagrams. Sparklines provide dense information in small spaces. Font-based sparklines are composed of glyphs which are located side by side so as to form the sparkline.
Sparklines for example may be provided as lines or column graphics. Further embodiments of sparklines are also known in the art.
Known methods for generating a sparkline which is composed of glyphs which comprise or consist of lines suffer from the drawback that the thickness of the lines forming the sparkline varies within the sparkline. This results in an uneven and non-uniform appearance of the sparkline. An example of such prior art sparkline is shown in FIG. 1 which clearly demonstrates that the thickness of the lines which form the sparkline varies within the sparkline.
The reason for this phenomenon resides in the fact that according to known methods two adjoining glyphs are assembled so that the height of the adjoining lines at the linking portion is identical. This is shown in FIG. 2. The line of the left hand glyph has a height which corresponds to the line thickness. The line of the right hand glyph has a height which corresponds to the thickness of the left hand glyph. However, due to the fact that the line of the right hand glyph has a slope which differs from that of the left hand glyph the line thickness of the right hand glyph is smaller. The thickness of the line of the right hand glyph thus depends on the difference in slopes between the lines of the neighboring glyphs. Only if the slopes of the lines of the neighboring glyphs are identical the thickness of the lines is also identical.
It is of course also possible to provide an equal thickness for the lines of the glyphs independent of the slopes. This, however, will lead to the drawback that overlapping portions will occur or that gaps will occur between the lines. Examples therefore are shown in FIG. 3.